Minimalism in Editing.

Minimalism in Editing.

I’ve been working on embracing minimalismjust a bit for the past few years—a kind of sideways hug you might give a gregarious relative who wants to pull you into their orbit even though you aren’t really sure you belong there.

Then, when 2016 turned into 2017, I started bear hugging minimalism, going room by room, closet by closet, shirt by shirt, boxing up every single thing I knew we didn’t need and finding new homes for it all. It has been an amazing experience—freeing, restorative—and the gratitude I feel sometimes overwhelms me: not for the things I have but for the people I’m surrounded by and for how my life is falling together.

In the past months, and in the same vein, I’ve become very interested in what Carol Fisher Saller has to say about editing, namely to leave well enough the heck alone. In the past, especially as a new editor, I wanted to show people how intelligent I was. I was desperate to prove I deserved the title of editor, and because of that, I was heavy-handed at times, changing text because I knew better.

<grimace>

Today, I really know better, and I know that editing isn’t about change. It’s about helping.

The job of an editor is to help writers present ideas in the most clear, concise, and reader-friendly ways possible.

You read that right: In its purest form, editing is about the reader. Will the reader understand? Appreciate? Enjoy? And of course, keep reading? These are what matter most.